Still using Firefox because privacy matters

I am still using Firefox as my number one browser, occasionally switching to Opera, and occasionally trying out Chrome (on my Laptop). Why am I so stubborn, some Chrome fans will ask? And why am I not using the default Android browser on my slate? And why did I not end up buying an iPad?

It all boils down to two points: The browser ecosystem and the browser ethos.

The web is more important than apps

Sometimes I hear people say it's all about the apps. I disagree. The web is the only one truly open and life changing platform. I did not chose Android over iOS because of usability or design concerns. I'd say it is still slightly – but only very slightly – behind. My new phone is a Nokia N9. Neither Android or iOS, but Meego! And yes, it has a few hundred apps, including a Dropbox client and a Google Reader.

(By the way, the user interface on the N9 is just fantastic, it beats both the iPhone and Android!)

However, both the Android Tablet and the Meego Phone lets me run Firefox. And that is nowadays a sine qua none for me when choosing a device.

Every major browser has an ecosystem nowadays

Of course all browsers can surf the web and in that regard the web is their ecosystem. But in addition to that they come with additional features.

• Internet Explorer's ecosystem is that of corporate intranets, Windows and the occasional web site that still requires ActiveX. I know of few people who enters this ecosystem by choice, except gamers, but it is easy to get support. And all your games are playable on the hardware that is far cheaper than anything from Apple. And Windows does really have the best graphics drivers and infrastructure for sound.
• Chrome's ecosystem is of course Google products: G-mail, G-cal, G-reader, G-docs and G+. You're at least considering getting an Android phone and think that Chrome OS has a lot more potential than it has shown so far. You are obviously not so concerned with the privacy of your data.
• Safari's ecosystem is of course the Apple products. If you are into Apple, you're using a Mac, and every program in sight that starts with an i. You had an iPod and now have an iPhone and you will get an iPad, not because you need it, but because its made by Apple. In short, you enjoy the shiny prison of being locked in to Apple. Censorship and authoritarian control of the platform be damned – the bars are golden!
• Opera thrives on the mobile and on devices. They have managed to make web surfers out of millions of people who never could afford a modern smart phone. In some ways though, they struggle since the entire web universe basically is their ecosystem – except for sites made by incompetent developers that shut Opera out for no good reason. There are things like Opera Link and Opera Unite, but they have not got the buzz they so rightfully deserve. The fact that Opera pioneered many things now common to all browsers, like tabs, and have always been a true champion of standards, even before Mozilla appeared, makes them worthy of tons of respect.

So, what makes Firefox ecosystem so special? It boils down to one thing. Firefox is everything!

• It is not the oldest champion of web standards among browser vendors, as that honor goes to Opera, but they are a good runner up, and it was Firefox that de facto wrestled the web away from Internet Explorer, providing room for all other browsers to exist as well. Firefox paved the way for both Safari and Chrome!
• It is not the true speed king, as that title goes to Chrome or perhaps Opera, that are faster on most – but not all – benchmarks as far as I can tell. But it is fast enough. And it championed the cause of being lean – once upon a time! Even today it consumes far less system resources than most other browsers.
• It is, however, the true champion of add-ons. And it has the best add-ons for my needs.
• Firefox has the best sync. First of all it is client side encrypted, meaning no data mining opportunities for Google or anyone else. But what makes it stand out is the syncing of tabs. It's a time saver and a life improvement factor! I sue it all the time, moving between computers, my phone and my tablet.

The right focus for the future

The economy of the future in IT is data driven. In a world of ubiquitous computing stewardship of our data in the cloud is the main prize for all big players to fight about. Through pads, tabs and boards data will be accessible in lots of places. But whoever is in control of the cloud is the winner of the future.

But will cloud stored data be accessible to all? Or only a select few that use the right brand?

And will it be inaccessible to anybody except those that I chose to share my data with? Or will the host continually mine my data and in the worst case scenario share it without my consent?

In this regard, Apple's guiding principles fail totally. The company shows close to zero interest in interoperability and since the margins go down when selling cheap devices this becomes a global problem. By building digital walls around the data in the richest countries, we are once again failing all non-western countries.

By the way, the Arab spring was not brought to the world by Apple, but by Nokia…

Google might not have failed yet. Interoperability is high on their agenda and so far their data mining seem to be mostly anonymized. But when one single entity sits on too much data and control the complete surrounding ecosystem, we are providing someone with enormous temptations. Sooner or later that temptation will become too strong!

Therefore we need truly anonymized cloud technologies. We need user owned and controlled data. We need stuff like browser id to replace the usage of id-solutions provided by Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft or Apple.

In short, we need what Mozilla and Opera are championing. And for me personally that means that if you see me using a browser for anything but testing, that will still be Firefox for the foreseeable future, unless I change to Opera!

Chrome's auto update argument has just been disabled

A short note: When I have criticized Chrome for putting out half baked features on the web, the usual defense is that Chrome auto updates and that the release cycle is so short that developers will not be locked in to a version where the feature is half baked only. OK, but now Chrome is available as an MSI packet, and that changes everything!

I was anticipating that move, having experience not only in web development, but also in network administration. The key to getting into any organization is deployment through Active Directory group policies. Setting up and deploying an MSI-packet is expensive and not something an organization will do on a bi-monthly basis, unless there is some really critical security fix needed. They will not do it in order to fix a broken HTML5 feature.

What does this mean

If corporations, universities, schools, hospitals and other organizations decide to use Chrome, we will see a significant rise in the usage of old versions.

So providing an MSI-package makes it more appealing for corporations to roll out Chrome, but it still is work to do all local modifications, like setting proxies and home page. That's a hurdle big enough to discourage most organizations from updating on every release. Such aggressive updating will not happen. Are we clear on that?

Ergo: Rolling out half baked features in Chrome just became a really important problem for us all and failure to see that from the Chrome team is simply irresponsible. You can't have the cake and eat it too, and that simple rule applies to Google as well as everybody else.

Update

It seems that the Chrome MSI-package is half baked as well! How ironic. It's basically just a wrapper around the install exe-file. Furthermore, this means I've not yet been able to determine if the auto-update feature is disabled. But if not, what sysadmin in his or her right mind would allow self-updating software on the computers of the network?

No browser supports HTML5 yet. Part 1. The rant.

Yes, you've read that headline correctly. There are so many websites that measure HTML5 readiness in one way or another, and so many marketing pitches that claim HTML5 support for browser X, Y or Z. But the crux of the matter is this. Supporting HTML 5, regardless of definition, is not a boolean proposition. I.e. It's not something you do or do not, it is something you do more or less.

This discussion will consist of two posts. The first is an anti-webkit fan boy rant, probably only useful as self-therapy for me. The second part is my technical discussion about the subject matter at hand.

Rant begins here

Whenever a major browser vendor releases a new version, or preview version, you can bet a month's salary on the fact that comments will appear on forums, Twitter or blog posts that asks does it support HTML5 (it used to be CSS 3). Some other browser is then hailed as if it does, usually Safari or Chrome, since they have either the most obnoxious marketing or the dumbest fan boys(?) And sometimes the comment is made complete in its stupidity by an argument that vendor X should just “use Webkit”.

I do not intend to throw cheap jabs at Webkit, in any incarnation, be it Chrome, Safari, Froyo, S60, Web OS, Nokia WRT, QTWebkit or WebkitGtk. Webkit is a really good rendering engine, or perhaps nowadays more aptly described as the core of a rendering engine. OK, maybe I'd like to throw a jab at Froyo and Adobe AIR for the dumb ass decision not to enable SVG, but that's beside my point, and not Webkit's fault at all.

Other comments like Mozilla is lazy or have stopped inventing are not hard to find either. But it's hard to claim that Opera is not inventing, so non Opera fan boys just tend to ignore them. After all, that makes it much easier to claim originality, even though one has just copied Opera.

I am not saying that Firefox is without it's gang of fan boys. Perhaps they are equally loud and obnoxious, but it's been a long time that they've been in my vicinity. (Or perhaps I am that fan boy?)

Source of confusion number one: Browser vendors

It is reasonable to expect the upstarts to be more aggressive in their marketing, but marketing tends to turn into blatant lies when exaggeration is becoming the norm. Consider this support chart for Safari 5 from Apple:

Source: http://www.apple.com/safari/whats-new.html [checked 2010-07-08]

Problem is, once someone has started to claim support for a feature, even though that support is half baked and incomplete, everyone else has to answer in kind, and claim support even when their implementations are equally half-baked. Or even worse, rush out such half baked implementations to the market to show everyone that they are also a leader.

(I'll explain why Apple's claims are false in part 2 of this discussion.)

Source of confusion number two: Well intended web developers

Why is this a source of confusion? Because we tend to put up demos of new cool technologies that are not really examples of best practice, e.g. even though transformations and transitions work in the latest versions of Firefox and Opera, many demos use the webkit prefix only. Heck, I've even seen demos of rounded corners, something that's been in Firefox since 2004 (3 years ahead of Webkit) that used the only the -webkit- prefix! (Yes, I know there are good examples as well.)

I am not surprised that Apple browser sniffs for Safari in their HTML5 demos – even though I am annoyed at such blatant disregard for best practice. After all, that's not technology, that's marketing. (And yes, I know there are a few things that one can do in Webkit based browsers only, such as CSS Animations (not transformations) – a technology still in need of a valid use case, BTW – and CSS perspectives, but that's also beside my point.)

When the WebGL Quake demo originally worked in Chrome only, thanks to flaws in the demo code, not in Firefox itself, it was claimed that Firefox was ”too slow”, even before such a claim could be tested. That was not marketing (I hope), that was developers not doing their job. And when someone is demoing reflections in Webkit, without at least discussing that Firefox can do the same thing, albeit with a different technique, which is more powerful, BTW, it might be lack of knowledge. But the lasting impression on readers, equally lacking in knowledge, is that Webkit based browsers are soo far ahead, when in reality they are not.

Another example is gradients. They first appeared in Safari and for a while they could not be demoed in any other browser. But since 3.6 Firefox supports gradients as well. Doing an gradient demo today using the webkit syntax only is not only bad practice because it is limiting the demo to a few browsers. It is also cheating oneself and one's audience of the syntax that is much more likely to be the upcoming final W3C standard. I.e. If you are limiting your demo to one syntax only, the Firefox version is the more future proof one, the one web developers really should be looking at in earnest.

A real problem caused by too many Webkit-centric demos on the web, is Microsoft contemplating supporting -webkit- prefixed CSS properties. Luckily they back paddled on that one, but it still serves as a nice illustration of the problem.

To alleviate this problem Mozilla has proposed a set of best practices for demos, that includes being as cross browser as possible, using graceful degradation ,etc. Read (at the end of the post) and learn, people!

Where innovation happens = everywhere

Even Internet Explorer, that I've cursed so many times, did tons of stuff already in the 90's that's only recently have been picked up by others. Yes, there is one big difference. The filters in IE were not being put forward for standardization, but was an attempt to embrace and extend, Microsoft of the 90's primary way of competing in unjust ways. But from a pure innovation standpoint, IE was first in doing many things.

And for all Webkit fan boys I have a home assignment. Please investigate where the following technologies were invented:

• WebGL
• HTML5 video and audio
• Using any element as CSS backgrounds
• Applying SVG effects on non SVG content
• Full page zoom
• Canvas text
• Compiled JavaScript
• Hardware accelerated SVG and Canvas
• Audio Data API

Hint: The answer is not one and the same, but never Safari or Chrome.

I am not saying this to diminish the considerable achievements by Webkit browsers, but wishing for a Webkit monoculture is plain stupid. Just like it was plain stupid to wish for a Gecko based monoculture five years ago – when Webkit hardly was a blip on the radar and had tons of bugs (JavaScript in Safari 2 anyone?). And what if KHTML never had been developed? It could hjave happened since lots of people thought it would be better for Konqueror to switch to Gecko. Well, Webkit is based on KHTML, so if that advice had been heeded, we would not have had Webkit today.

End of rant – sort of

All of the above is not me saying Chrome is a bad browser. It is not. In some ways it's the best browser – but not in every way! My primary reason for not using Chrome in my daily work? I think monoculture is bad and even though I sympathize with Google using Chrome to push the competition into being faster, I do not want to see a world where one company is the dominant player at every tier of the web experience. Such power will inevitably corrupt, no matter how hard the company in question tries to avoid being evil. Add to that a leader that is absolutely clueless about integrity and that by far outweighs the fact that Firefox currently is a few milliseconds behind Chrome in some JavaScript benchmarks.

Oh, yes, I use Linux, so Safari is not an option at all. And Apple is every bit as evil today as Microsoft was in the 90's.

My primary reason for supporting non Webkit based mobile browsers like Opera or Fennec (Firefox) is not that they are clearly superior. In many ways they are not – and again in some ways they are! (At least they do SVG, Froyo!) But once again it comes back to this. Monoculture benefits no one in the long run. For a moment the idea might seem to be appealing – as when developing a specific web app – but holding on to such an idea in the long run is just showing lack of vision and lack of historical knowledge.

To round things off, here is a video (HTML5 video was an Opera idea) of WebGL in Firefox 4 – a technology invented mostly by Mozilla. (Oops! I just gave away two answers in my home work assignment.)

OK, therapy session is over. Glad to have gotten that off my chest. Tomorrow I promise to be productive!